Page 3 of Wolf Bane (Marked #3)

She sniffed again. “It’s human medicine. We don’t need that junk.”

Ah, there’s my headache. Right on schedule. “Then why are you here? If you continue to refuse treatment plans, there’s nothing I can do for you. Unless you’re here to revel in my sparkling personality, which I somehow doubt.”

“I can’t piss,” Vinnie grumbled. Melly and her brother Jay both snickered at that. Vinnie’s glower, if possible, grew even more terrifying. “Shut up.”

Celestine pushed to her feet, bracing against the room’s small countertop. “We’re sick. Human crap,” she added with a disdainful curl of her lip. “Ever since your sort’s been creepin’ in on our land, we’ve all come down with this shit.”

As if to underscore her grandmother’s point, Melly let loose with a hacking, racking cough.

Jay, not to be left behind, opened his mouth and erupted in a cacophony of rattling, scraping hacks that made all of us recoil.

“Okay then,” I muttered, grabbing for the hand sanitizer on the wall. “Let’s triage this…”

Clannish to the end, the Clemenses refused to be divided between rooms. Vinnie refused to pee in a cup, the kids refused to stop stealing exam room supplies, and Celestine refused to stop cursing my heritage up one side and down the other.

The fact I didn’t seem bothered by her imprecations regarding my parents only fired her up worse.

“Typical human trash,” she muttered as I wrangled Jay into showing me his throat. “Don’t give a single damn about family.”

“I would if I could, but I can’t so I won’t,” I murmured. “You’ve got a pretty red throat there, kiddo. Been coughing a lot?”

Melly tugged my pant leg and hacked heroically.

“When did this first start?”

Vinnie was the one who replied this time. “Ma got the sniffles a month or so back, after the big meeting up in Denton.”

“Vinnie,” she hissed. “That ain’t his business.”

“Denton? Tyler went up there back in… August?” I mused.

“July? Stood in for Ethan at a big clan gathering.” Yeah, that’s right.

I know your business. Because it’s kind of mine now, too.

“Annual thing, right? Like a family reunion for the Texas clans and packs?” I knew damn well what it was—Ethan had been going since as long as I’d known him, first at his dad’s side, then on his own, then with Tyler after I went off to college apparently.

The specifics were still off limits to me, but the gist was family gathering but with more red tape.

Vinnie eyed me warily, lifting one meaty shoulder in a dissipated sort of shrug. “Kinda. Talkin’ about business. Clan stuff.”

“The Stones,” Celestine groused, rolling her eyes so hard I thought she might strain something. “More human-loving trash.”

“Ma,” Vinnie muttered, cheeks tinting just a tiny bit. “Not so loud.”

Celestine pursed her lips but kept quiet for the rest of the visit.

Mostly. Grunted, snorted, huffed, but didn’t talk out loud.

Melly let me peek at her throat and coughed in my face while giggling—thank the powers that be for masks—and Jay sat under the exam table, poking at my feet with a tongue depressor until I was done examining his sister’s lymph nodes.

“What about you, Vinnie? Have you had any symptoms?”

He shrugged. “Just tired a lot, but I work long shifts at La Dolce Vita.”

I paused, mid-handwash, leveling a sharp glare at Vinnie. “Are you certain you haven’t had any symptoms?” Working in a kitchen, breathing germs not just on his coworkers but possibly contaminating the food of dozens of people per day… Nightmare fuel on several levels.

He bared his teeth, incisors weirdly larger than any other were I’d ever met.

I wondered if he’d had them fixed to look like that or if his genetics just decided to lean hard into the trait.

It was a disturbing effect, to be honest, and if the previous year and a half had gone any differently for me, I’d likely have been scared.

Instead, I just stared back until he answered.

“Of course not. I’m not an idiot, Doctor Babin.

And we been wearing masks back there anyway.

Nestor, one of the other cooks, he got some cold that won’t go away, so we’ve been careful back there. ”

I nodded, not really satisfied but there was little else I could do unless I wanted to play Chicken Little and alert the health department over a cold being passed between line cooks and their families. “Well, I’d like to take a culture of the kids’ throats to rule out strep and?—”

My words ended in a sharp yelp as Melly sank her teeth into my calf, her sharp little incisors so like her father’s piercing through the fabric of my trousers and drawing blood.

Do you know how much paperwork is involved when a patient bites you?

Neither did I until that afternoon.

“I liked it better in the ME’s office,” I muttered, adding my name to yet another incident report. “My patients didn’t bite then.”

“And if they did, you’d have more problems than just some forms to sign,” Reba pointed out pertly. “Now, you gonna do your pathogen testing or are you going to the urgent care for that?”

I scowled. “I’ll do it myself.”

“Thought so.”

“How many patients are left for the day?”

Reba didn’t look up from her computer, tapping away rapidly. “Hm?”

“Reba. Patients?”

“Oh, sorry, I didn’t hear you.”

I waited. “Reba?”

“Six,” she said quietly, darting a glance my way. “I was gonna turn ‘em loose. The hollering earlier was kind of upsetting…”

“I didn’t holler!”

“You did,” someone called from the waiting room. “We all heard it!”

“Jesus… Let me take some samples. Send the next patient back to exam room two until we get one cleaned up.”

* * *

By the time the clinic closed for the day and I’d wrestled the last patient chart into submission, I was past ready to just go home, eat cold leftovers and collapse into bed.

It wasn’t so much the physical tiredness that came from working on my feet all day but the mental exhaustion, the sheer pants-shitting levels of stress that loomed large whenever I remembered I was holding people’s lives in my hands in ways my old job at the ME’s office hadn’t required.

Shutting off the car engine, I sat in the car in the driveway for a few minutes, just staring at my house as I gathered the last shreds of my motivation so I could get out and walk inside.

A laundry list of things to handle waited for me once I ate, before I crawled into bed: talk to Ethan about the Clemens family again was at the top.

No, scratch that. Just talking to Ethan, that was at the very top.

I usually hated video chats—they felt too businesslike, too performative—but since that was the only way to actually see Ethan lately, I found myself looking forward to them.

At least with him.

Everyone else could kick rocks and just text me like normal people.

Slightly buoyed by the thought of talking to my man, I heaved myself out of the car and made it about four steps towards the front door when a familiar voice rang out from the direction of Mal’s house. “Hey! Wanna see a cool trick?”

Mariska didn’t even wait for me to close the car door before barreling towards me, floppy dog at her heels.

After weeks of name changes and title endowments from the little princess, Mal had firmly but very…

dad-ly, I suppose, insisted she pick a name.

So Pupper of Many Names was now, officially, Boo.

And he and Mariska stuck together like peanut butter and jelly.

Boo was hot on her heels as she gangled my way, his huge paws slapping the ground in time with her growing feet.

Mariska skidded to a halt with a twist of her hips, and after a brief flail when Boo crashed into her legs, grinned up at me.

“I’ve been practicing my quick stops, so when Dad finally lets me get roller blades, I can show Tomas I’m better than him.”

“Always good to plan ahead,” I said solemnly.

Mariska cackled, her expression morphing from delight to upset as a sudden cough caught her square in the chest. “Dang it,” she gasped as it slowed. “Stupid Tomas.”

“Whoa there.” I stepped just enough to the side so she couldn’t rocket off again immediately. “You getting sick? Where’s your dad?”

As if summoned, Mal came galloping around the side of their little bungalow, wide-eyed and clutching a bottle of that gross children’s cough syrup that tasted like where grape bubble gum went to die. “Mariska! Seriously?”

“It’s boring inside,” she complained, dragging—literally dragging—her feet back towards Mal. “I had to double check that the weird guy wasn’t outside my window again. Besides, I wanted to show Uncle Landry how I can already do the cool quick stops.”

“What weird guy?” I asked, on alert. “There was someone around here today?”

Mal rolled his eyes where Mariska couldn’t see. “No?—”

“Not today,” Mariska cut in. “Like, night before last? Maybe it was like really early morning? It was super dark out, but I know he was there. I heard him breathing. He was like…” She waved one arm in the direction of the green space behind our houses, a swath of land that dipped towards the creek hidden behind scrubby plants and a few thick, overhanging trees.

“He was there. I heard him! It wasn’t just an animal, Dad,” she added with a glare. “I know .”

“Baby, we checked, remember? There wasn’t a soul out there except some squirrels and a bunch of annoyed birds.”

Mariska set her chin mutinously. “I know what I heard.”

“Sometimes, brains are weird and play tricks on us,” I offered. “Ever hear of hypnogogic hallucinations? They can happen when you’re half asleep, or really tired. Your brain thinks it’s hearing or seeing something that’s not really there.”

She leveled an unamused look at me. “I know what I heard.”

Mal raised his hands helplessly, shaking his head. “Well, I know what I didn’t find. But just to be extra safe, we’ll make sure to put a broomstick under the doorknob and double check all the locks.”